It is possible to travel from India to Europe overland by train and bus via Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and then through your selected route in Europe. With the hassel of getting a visa for Iran and then Pakistan as well as possibly needing one for Turkey, it would probably be more expensive to get the train and bus etc than it would to fly from Mumbai or Delhi-London and then get to Amsterdam from there. It is more of an expedition than a convenient cheap way to get to Europe from India. Some of the trains that do this are not at all frequent so you may be looking at over a month to do it.

You should definitely check out http://www.seat61.com/India.htm for information on the same thing but in the opposite direction. On there it shows how to get from the UK-India, so you can just work backwards to figure the exact directions from India-Europe but stopping at the Istanbul part and then choosing a route that would suit you. If you are wanting it to save money rather than have a very adventurous trip, well I'd go for the flight.

I'm no expert by any means on flights from India, but I know that British Airways does Mumbai and Delhi-London flights. I did see that a reasonably cheap international flight exists between Mumbai as well as Delhi-Dubai with Jazeera Airways. So maybe it might be cheaper to fly from Dubai-Frankfurt(Germany) and get the train to Amsterdam from there than the BA flight to London and other transport to Amsterdam.

i really appreciate your info, especially about jazeera air. i was having problems finding flights out of india. through jazeera, a flight from bombai to dubai is only 74 bucks. but from bombai to frankfurt, cheapest i saw was $374 through expedia. you know of any other airline that would fly from dubai to frankfurt cheaper?

i do agree with you on taking the adventurous route. but my only problem is that there are many friends/places in europe i need to visit and i start university again in august. this is basically my round the world trip starting the 20th of this month in beijing and from there try to go around the globe to get home.

Look into Dubai to anywhere in Europe. If you can't do Frankfurt for cheap. Another option would be India - Abu Dhabi - Europe. Both are used for lots of stopovers, so there should be plenty of lights. It's just a case of then finding the cheapest into Europe. So as well as Frankfurt, look at Dubai/Abu Dhabbi - London (in particular), Paris, Munich, Geneva, Zurich, Vienna, Rome etc. All of which are easy enough for Amsterdam. You can probably get a Dubai -Amsterdam flight as well, although that would be more expensive.

I'm currently looking for flights to India from Germany and I can tell you that $374 including taxes is a very very good price.

I get quotes of 500-600 EUR (780 USD) for Germany to India return inlcuding all taxes, and I don't think that it is that much cheaper in the opposite direction.

Note that some national airlines have got "citizen flights", which means that you can get a ticket extra cheap. Inquire at Air India. Also flights to London should be cheaper than to Frankfurt, as there is more competition on the London-India route.

Another airline you could check out is Iranian based Mahan Air. They fly to Delhi and got some very cheap prices to Düsseldorf, Germany. Low season is 433 EUR return, high season is 484 return from Delhi. (Note that Mahan Air has a bad reputation - they have really very old airplanes.)